Do Meads Grow With Advancing Age?

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 485, 5 July 1890, Page 6

Do Meads Grow With Advancing Age?

Some amusing letters have appeared in a daily contemporary in regard to an alleged steady increase in the size of Mr Gladstone’s head, which, it is said, is rendered manifest i by a progressive enlargement in the size of the hat required to cover it. The correspondence, the ‘ Lancet ’ observes, exhibits an extraordinary ignorance of well ascer tained faces ; for, if there is one thing which should bo acknowledged by all anatomisbs and physiologists, it is that the nervous system, like other parts of the body, undergoes atrophy with advancing age —an atrophy that pervades every tissue, and is as apparent in the thinning of the vocal chords that alters the voice to ‘childish treble,’ as in the shrunk shanks for which the ‘ youthful hose, well saved, are a world too wide.’ No reason can be assigned why the brain should escape tho general change that affects the digestive and the circulatory systems alike. Its attributes and faculties attain their highest excellence at or before mid-age, and from that time forth exhibit only a steady decline. To compare Mr Gladstone with Napoleon, respecting whom a similar story is related, is absurd. The head of Napoleon may have grown between 20 and 45, because his brain was greatly exercised during the last 10 years of the past century and the first 10 of thepresent; ' but no calls have been made on Mr Gladstone of late years at all comparable to the strain on the mental and bodily powers of the French Emperor during that eventful period. The ossification of the sutures of the cranium practically prevents increase of the volume of the brain in advanced fife ; and, even granting some slight increase, such increase would be compensated for by the attenuation of tho cranial bones, which is well known to occur in old age. A change in form there may be, but none in size.